Mushu, Hollywood’s Leading Dog

Who’s the most famous pug on the planet? That distinction may well go to Frank the Pug, the scene-stealing canine star of Men in Black (1997) and Men in Black II (2002).

While Frank looks like a normal Pug, he’s actually an extraterrestrial (a Remoolian) in disguise. In both films he was played by a well-trained pug named Mushu, with Tim Blaney, a puppeteer and voice actor, providing his voice.

“I wound up liking that little dog,” Tommy Lee Jones, one of the Pug’s co-stars, told an interviewer. “He really earns his T-bones. . . . That dog will run across a room, hit a mark and stop and sit down or stand up, look in whatever direction you tell him to.”

By the time of the sequel, Mushi, then 7, was showing enough gray to warrant a special make-up job to hide it. When not attending red-carpet functions and otherwise enjoying the full star treatment, the animal actor reportedly romped around in what his owner called “puppy heaven,” a massive tree-lined yard in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles complete with its own fire hydrants.